The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Among the advantages of main memory-based databases is that they enable faster data access and analysis than purely disk-based databases. However, main memory-based databases are limited by main memory capacity, which remains relatively small in comparison to disk capacity. One solution is to use a computing device with a high-capacity main memory. However, such devices are very expensive, thereby making their use cost-prohibitive. Another solution is to effectively increase main memory capacity by using a cluster of computing devices. However, this distributed architecture would instead be limited by the speed of the interconnect.
Thus, there is a need for a cost-effective approach to increasing main memory capacity for a single database server.
While each of the drawing figures depicts a particular embodiment for purposes of depicting a clear example, other embodiments may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the elements shown in the drawing figures. For purposes of depicting clear examples, one or more figures may be described with reference to one or more other figures, but using the particular arrangement depicted in the one or more other figures is not required in other embodiments.